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About Us

The Strategy

Professional development must be initiated strategically by leaders who have a strategic vision based on the needs of their schools and the principles of adult learning.

Our course, Action Planning for Disciplinary Literacy, ensures that every district-based Reading Ways site leader has been introduced to our coaching approach and developed a strategic plan for supporting cross-disciplinary literacy at his or her school. Dr. Jacy Ippolito developed this course around the concepts set forth in Cultivating Coaching Mindsets: An Action Guide for Literacy Leaders (written with Dr. Rita Bean).

Our mental models and frames shape how we think about our work and how we think about change processes. Much of coaching work is about helping colleagues, other adult learners, to become more reflective practitioners and shift their instruction slowly to improve outcomes for students. However, if the work of coaching is viewed through a purely technical lens (Heifetz et al., 2009) or as single-loop learning (Argrys & Schon, 1974, 1996), in other words, learning that simply requires detection of a problem and implementation of a known solution, then this frame for coaching will likely not produce the deep, systemic changes that most literacy leadership work is meant to provoke. – Bean and Ippolito

Our course introduces some of the big ideas in adult professional learning and provides guidance, examples, and specific tools for school leaders as they set out to determine the literacy needs in their schools and develop plans to meet those needs.

If after completing this course your team determines it is time to become a Reading Ways Partner School, we step into action. We work with your school’s leadership team to refine and implement the plan developed by the RW site leader. Most schools use our book, Adolescent Literacy in the Era of the Common Core, as a key text. Depending on the plan the site leader develops, we may use some or all the following:

Kick-off events featuring members of the RW team

Daylong or multi-day workshops

Leadership consultations

Online course participation for teachers (for graduate credit or not)

Print materials (posters, strategy guides, reading text sets)

Printables (hundreds of online materials that can be altered and adapted)

If you want to get started, contact us now. We will follow up immediately to get you or a member of your staff enrolled in Action Planning for Disciplinary Literacy.

The Team

EVERYONE THAT YOU WILL WORK WITH HERE STRONGLY BELIEVES IN THE CAUSE.

Every team member has been a teacher, literacy coach, and researcher. We work exclusively with middle and high schools to help content-area teams meet adolescents’ literacy needs.

Joshua Lawrence

Founder

Joshua Lawrence is an assistant professor of language, literacy and technology in the Department of Education, University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on: (1) creating and testing interventions and teaching methods to improve adolescent literacy outcomes and, (2) understanding L1 and L2 language and literacy development.

Josh’s experience as a Boston Public School teacher has motivated his interest in children’s language and literacy development.

Jacy Ippolito

Founder

Jacy Ippolito is an assistant professor in the Adolescent Education and Leadership Department in the School of Education at Salem State University, Salem MA. His research and teaching focus on the intersection of adolescent literacy, literacy coaching, teacher leadership, and school reform. Jacy is specifically interested in the roles that teacher leaders, principals, and literacy coaches play in helping institute and maintain instructional change at middle and high school levels. After completing his doctorate in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), Jacy has taught courses on adolescent literacy, school reform, teacher leadership, and literacy coaching at Salem State and at HGSE.

Jacy’s writing has appeared most recently in the books Adolescent Literacy (2012), Best Practices of Literacy Leaders (2012) and Essential Questions in Adolescent Literacy (2009), as well as in journals and online publications such as The Elementary School Journal (2010), Texas A&M Corpus Christi’s CEDER Yearbook (2010), the Literacy Coaching Clearinghouse (2009), the Massachusetts Reading Association’s Primer(2009; 2005), the Harvard Educational Review‘s Special Issue on Adolescent Literacy (2008), and the International Reading Association’s Standards for Middle and High School Literacy Coaches (2006).

Jacy continues to consult in Boston-area K-12 schools as a licensed reading specialist and literacy coach. Jacy taught in the Cambridge Public Schools for over seven years after earning his master’s degree in education from HGSE and his bachelor’s degree in English and Psychology from the University of Delaware’s Honors Program.

Lisa Aulet

Literacy Coach

Lisa is an advanced doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Teaching at Boston University, focusing in adolescent literacy and teacher development. She has served as lead teaching fellow, research assistant, and teaching assistant at Boston University, visiting lecturer at Salem State, and as lead teacher in the Intergenerational Literacy Program in Chelsea. Her research interests include academic language development, teacher leadership and development and disciplinary literacy instructional growth and innovation.

Prior to her doctoral work, Lisa spent close to 20 years in a variety of education-related capacities including serving on various public and private school boards and teaching reading, English and social studies at the Watertown Middle School, where she also mentored new and student teachers.

Lisa is a literacy coach and is currently building a private consulting practice working with secondary and college students in Academic reading and writing, college essay writing and college counseling. Prior to her career in Education, Lisa was in marketing with IBM, where she sold IBM systems solutions to solve business problems. She holds a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Georgetown University.

Jessica Tunney

Literacy Coach

Jessica Tunney is an advanced doctoral student in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include professional development design and facilitation, clinical supervision and classroom mentoring in teacher preparation, and the intersection between research and practice-based knowledge in classroom teaching and learning.

A former classroom and special education teacher in New York City and Los Angeles, Jessica has been leading professional development for over ten years to support teachers in addressing learning diversity in the classroom through instructional practice and inclusive curriculum design.

Chris Buttimer

Literacy Coach

Chris Buttimer is currently a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). His research interests include adolescent literacy, critical pedagogy, instructional coaching, and school reform. Chris recently completed a master’s degree in Language and Literacy at HGSE, obtaining a K-12 reading specialist license in the process.

Prior to coming to HGSE, Chris earned his master’s degree in teacher education from UMass Boston and taught 7th and 8th grade ELA in the Cambridge (MA) public schools for six years. In addition to his coursework, Chris has worked with HGSE and the Boston Public Schools (BPS) in a variety of roles, including as an advisor who supported teacher candidates during their teaching practicums.

Chris has also worked as a middle school curriculum developer for BPS through SERP, a non-profit organization linking educators and researchers together to create cross-disciplinary curriculum and improve teaching and learning.

Jenny Jacobs

Literacy Coach

Jenny Jacobs is currently a doctoral student at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). Jenny has focused much of her research and coursework at HGSE on teacher reflection & group inquiry and facilitating discussions among teachers.

Her professional development experience includes one year working as Academic Director of a K-9 bilingual school in Honduras, where she coached relatively inexperienced teachers, including modeling lessons, facilitating group planning and professional development, and observing lessons and giving feedback. Jenny also spent one year in San Salvador, El Salvador where she designed and implemented the first year of a professional development program from K-6th grade teachers which included the first-ever coaching program in the country.

Jenny prepared 30 national-level coaches, and they worked with local universities in introduce the program in 300 schools nationally. Jenny is currently working with Wheelock to supervise undergraduates doing school-based pre-practicum work with K-2 students as part of their training to teach early reading.

Proven tools and approaches for Purposeful Instruction.

We have created hundreds of resources in for teaching math, science, history, world languages and more. More importantly, they are clearly organized and labeled, alterable, and clearly aligned with our online and in-person courses. Our goal is to help you share your passion for learning in your discipline by making text more accessible for your students.

Course descriptions of each high quality course are available through links on the right.

Ways of Thinking and Working Like a Coach.

Our courses introduce some of the big ideas in adult professional learning, and provide guidance, examples and specific tools for school leaders as they set out to determine the literacy needs in their school and develop a plan to meet those needs.

Literacy leadership at the School and District Level.

We have developed a set of guidelines and resources for district leaders who have prioritized literacy through partnership with Reading Ways. We have tools to help select instructional leaders for the role of Reading Ways Site Leader, and for working with these leaders to develop a multi-year strategic plan. We have also developed our own Disciplinary Literacy Professional Learning & Coaching Standards which align with our course materials to ensure that leaders at all levels have the same expectations for learning and professional growth.

Featured resources

Instructional innovation is a complex issues that requires support at multiple levels.

Talent

Best team of educational leaders, coaches, and researchers bar none.

Strategy

Clear process for creating a needs assessment and strategic plan for your school or district.

Flexibility

Value

We are dedicated to provide the best value possible to you and your school.

Talk with a Specialist

Do you want free access to some our key readings and the first section of our course Action Planning for Disciplinary Literacy? Please request access here and we will respond in 48 hours with an activated username and password.

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Testimonials

"The activity that shifted my world was the inferencing activity. What I liked about that whole concept was that it really shifted the responsibility of learning to the student and it gave them a lot of time in the classroom to do it. Allowing them to have student-centered activities with the freedom to engage more. We have more fun, but they get it more because they own it more. So it's more fun to teach it, and it's certainly more real learning. After almost twenty years of teaching it's a huge shift!"

-Lara Collins,Beverly High School

"Guided by their practitioners, our teams explored instructional strategies that reflect an awareness of the demands of various kinds of reading and writing, of academic vocabulary and disciplinary genre. This training was instrumental in the successful launch of our initiative."